A multiyear estimate of methane fluxes in Alaska from CARVE atmospheric observations

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• 作者：Scot M. Miller ; Charles E. Miller ; Roisin Commane ; Rachel Y.‐W. Chang ; Steven J. Dinardo ; John M. Henderson ; Anna Karion ; Jakob Lindaas ; Joe R. Melton ; John B. Miller ; et al
• 刊名：Global Biogeochemical Cycles
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：October 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：30
• 期：10
• 页码：1441-1453
• 全文大小：2.7MB
• ISSN：1944-9224

文摘

Methane (CH₄) fluxes from Alaska and other arctic regions may be sensitive to thawing permafrost and future climate change, but estimates of both current and future fluxes from the region are uncertain. This study estimates CH₄ fluxes across Alaska for 2012–2014 using aircraft observations from the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) and a geostatistical inverse model (GIM). We find that a simple flux model based on a daily soil temperature map and a static map of wetland extent reproduces the atmospheric CH₄ observations at the statewide, multiyear scale more effectively than global-scale process-based models. This result points to a simple and effective way of representing CH₄ fluxes across Alaska. It further suggests that process-based models can improve their representation of key processes and that more complex processes included in these models cannot be evaluated given the information content of available atmospheric CH₄ observations. In addition, we find that CH₄ emissions from the North Slope of Alaska account for 24% of the total statewide flux of 1.74 ± 0.26 Tg CH₄ (for May–October). Global-scale process models only attribute an average of 3% of the total flux to this region. This mismatch occurs for two reasons: process models likely underestimate wetland extent in regions without visible surface water, and these models prematurely shut down CH₄ fluxes at soil temperatures near 0°C. Lastly, we find that the seasonality of CH₄ fluxes varied during 2012–2014 but that total emissions did not differ significantly among years, despite substantial differences in soil temperature and precipitation.